Idaho could see more election audits to 'enhance transparency and confidence' in results
BOISE, Idaho (CBS2) — Governor Little's recommended budget allocates half a million dollars to go to integrity audits in the state. The purpose is to enhance transparency and confidence in election results.
Election integrity is a growing conversation across the country, and state and local officials here in Idaho say it’s important to invest in our elections as more questions are raised.
"Various people thought there were inaccuracies in the election results for president,” said Deputy Secretary of State, Jason Hancock.
And while questions are being raised, Hancock says that there haven’t been any inaccuracies reported in the state of Idaho.
“I have a lot of confidence in our voting systems here,” Hancock said.
As concerns and conversations around election integrity develop across the country, Hancock says Idaho needs to invest in elections for accuracy and confidence to voters.
“More and more things that we are doing, whether it’s in elections or any other sector of our lives, is being done electronically,” Hancock said.
Hancock says Idaho voting systems are offline meaning they are difficult, if not impossible, to hack from the outside.
Ada County Clerk, Phil McGrane also says investing in post-election audits is worth it.
“We learned so much over these past four years really in terms of cyber security and other threats that we face in the election space,” McGrane said. “And so as it gets more complicated, it means we need to be more vigilant in terms of how we manage our elections and how we build support in the community.”
McGrane says funding for post-election audits will create another layer of accuracy and voter confidence.
Election audits are a cross-check of results to make sure everything matches up. There have only been a few audits in the state of Idaho and they have all been recent.
"It's exciting to see the governor taking such an interest and us getting the resources to be able to do these audits, which really bolsters confidence in our elections," said McGrane. "We'll actually go into much greater detail in terms of the comparison of the list of registered voters who signed up at the polls versus the number of ballots counted."
Hancock says legislation will be introduced during the session to create a system that will utilize the recommend $500,000.
“The thing what we're talking about with this legislation and the governor’s proposal would be to have a regular process in which the Secretary of State would, after primary and general elections, would do a random selection of elections around the state and would do a hand recount examination of those precincts,” Hancock said.
